Juliet by Anne Fortier Read Free Book Online

empty baggage stand. “This came for you last night.”
    “Wait!” I let go of the door and gathered the hotel bathrobe around me as tightly as I could. “That is not my suitcase.”
    “I know.” He pulled the foulard from his breast pocket and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “It is from Contessa Salimbeni. Here, she left a note for you.”
    I took the note. “What exactly is a contessa?”
    “Normally,” said Direttor Rossini with some dignity, “I do not carry luggage. But since it was Contessa Salimbeni—”
    “She is lending me her clothes?” I stared at Eva Maria’s brief handwritten note in disbelief. “And shoes?”
    “Until your own luggage arrives. It is now in Frittoli.”
    In her exquisite handwriting, Eva Maria anticipated that her clothes might not fit me perfectly. But, she concluded, it was better than running around naked.
    As I examined the specimens in the suitcase one by one, I was happy Janice could not see me. Our childhood home had not been big enough for two fashionistas, and so I—much to Umberto’s chagrin—had embarkedupon a career of being everything but. In school, Janice got her compliments from friends whose lives were headlined by designer names, while any admiration I got came from girls who had bummed a ride to the charity store, but who hadn’t had the vision to buy what I bought, or the courage to put it together. It was not that I disliked fancy clothes, it was just that I wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction of appearing to care about my looks. For no matter what I did to myself, she could always outdo me.
    By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed. When Aunt Rose had put our graduation photos side by side on the grand piano, she had smiled sadly and observed that, of all those many classes I had taken, I seemed to have graduated with the best results as the perfect anti-Janice.
    Eva Maria’s designer clothes were, in other words, definitely not my style. But what were my options? Following my telephone conversation with Umberto the night before, I had decided to retire my flip-flops for the time being and pay a little more attention to my bella figura. After all, the last thing I needed now was for Francesco Maconi, my mother’s financial advisor, to think I was someone not to be trusted.
    And so I tried on Eva Maria’s outfits one by one, turning this way and that before the wardrobe mirror, until I found the least outrageous one—a foxy little skirt and jacket, fire-engine red with big black polka dots—that made me look as if I had just emerged from a Jaguar with four pieces of perfectly matched luggage and a small dog called Bijou. But most important, it made me look as if I ate hidden heirlooms—and financial advisors—for breakfast.
    And by the way, it had matching shoes.
    IN ORDER TO GET to Palazzo Tolomei, Direttor Rossini had explained, I must choose to either go up Via del Paradiso or down Via della Sapienza. They were both practically closed to traffic—as were most streets in downtown Siena—but Sapienza, he advised, could be a bit of a challenge, and all in all, Paradiso was probably the safer route.
    As I walked down Via della Sapienza the façades of ancient houses closed in on me from all sides, and I was soon trapped in a labyrinth of centuries past, following the logic of an earlier way of life. Above me a ribbon of blue sky was crisscrossed by banners, their bold colors strangelyvivid among the medieval brick, but apart from that—and the odd pair of jeans drying from a window—there was almost nothing that committed this place to modernity.
    The world had developed around it, but Siena didn’t care. Direttor Rossini had told me that, for the Sienese, the golden age had been the late Middle Ages, and as I walked, I could see that he was right; the city clung to its medieval self with a stubborn disregard for the attractions of progress. There